I reached out to an estranged friend after a decade of silence. This man is a well-established, intelligent, well-educated scientist. He has held significant positions as a scientific program officer in the government and is (as far as I know) well respected in his professional community. He presents himself as deeply Christian, committed to moral principles and speaks eloquently about faith, virtue, heaven, and God. He has wealth, privilege, standing, gravitas — the kind that insulates you from the immediate consequences of policy and permits you to freely offer your opinion and expect to be taken seriously.
Our friendship had fractured during Trump's first term - I had invited him to my wedding in August of 2016 where he publicly proclaimed to my friends and family that he was pro-Trump. I remember subsequently having a single conversation and a chat-message exchange with him in November of that year in which, I admit, I was angry and frustrated by his apparent measured reference to right-wing talking points. He said at the time that 'Neo Nazi and alt-right elements will have no influence in the administrations policies', and I was curt, angry and largely cut him off. I contacted him again in 2020 after January 6th —the violent attempt to overturn an election— and he still maintained Trump was the better choice than Hillary Clinton over the preceding four years.
I could not deal with the sheer contradiction of it. He had invited me to private religious ceremonies that he participated in. I trusted him and always thought he was a good man - but here he was, advocating for Donald Trump and generally behaving as though what was happening in right wing politics was normal and preferential to the disaster, in his opinion, that Hillary Clinton would have unleashed upon the country. The disconnect was so profound, so bewildering, that I simply shut him out.
In the intervening time I thought of my friend almost every time I heard about some perverse aspect of Trump's activities in the news, even before he regained the presidency. It still bothered me.
Fast forward to now, I'd been thinking a lot about the best way to undercut the monstrosity of every single thing that was coming from right wing US politics and listened Ezra Klein's podcast on political dialogue in the wake of Charlie Kirk's assassination —my experiences with my old colleague still bugged me and I just thought that I should try to come full circle and see if he was open to a discussion. How we might actually bridge these divides? How we might have conversations that don't immediately collapse into combat or mutual contempt?
So I reached out, sending him some of my recent writing, genuinely hoping we could restart the conversation on different terms. It was worth trying. If we can't talk to people we've actually known and respected, if every political disagreement means permanent rupture, then we're in serious trouble as a democracy.
I have to give him some credit, he was open to the idea. He took the time to read my writing and responded, but that was where the trouble began.
'I came here for an Argument'
I thought that we could just have at it and discuss our differences openly and candidly, but in retrospect, I can see how he was expecting a polite discussion where he could raise questions, make some points and I would just be happy to agree in places, disagree in others but generally be 'civil' and not have our feathers ruffled too much by the conversation.
I grossly underestimated how many of his basic positions, general mannerism, and argumentation style would be something I found impossible to engage with politely or positively. I won't discuss what we talked about (it was a private conversation, after all), but within the first email, he made five or six points and each one violated some basic behavioral norm or position that I held (with regard to sexism, racism, transcending tribalism, behavioral norms around argumentation, privilege, etc.).
I responded substantively—point by point. I challenged his positions and attempted to construct a counterargument - with caveats about how, if what I was saying upset him, we could talk it through. His rebuttal came a week later - doubling down and escalating his original claims whilst expressing annoyance and fatigue around the discussion. He said that this style of discussion was typical of his dealings with progressives and that he found it tiresome. I did attempt to salvage the discussion but found myself replaying his words in my head and realized that it was neither worth it nor healthy for either of us to continue.
There's a Monty Python sketch that seems relevant - a man comes to an office and pays money to have an argument with someone - but rather than having a back and forth with substantive points, his adversary simply contradicts everything he says ("No I didn't!"). When the sketch ends, the man storms out, frustrated and annoyed. At some level, my estranged friend and I are both like this man - coming to an argument in the hope of countering the fractious, unpleasant, difficult energy we encounter in these situations - engaging in the conversation and eliciting a completely different response to the one we were hoping to encounter and then leaving frustrated and disappointed by the outcome.
The experience clarified a couple of things for me though - firstly, political arguments of these variety are just horrible. They suck. They are so-not-fun. None of the most common manifestations of modern political discourse generate healthy debate. The choices are (A) screaming matches, (B) fact-checking based on evidence of varying quality and zero trust, (C) moral condemnation, (D) cutting people off entirely, or (E) just avoiding politics in general. None of these options satisfy the fundamental need that we have as a civic society of being able to understand the complex political environment we live and find some kind of workable consensus that helps society function better.
So we're stuck in this bind: We desperately need to talk to each other. Effective governance requires it. But we don't know how to do it productively. Every attempt seems to make things worse. We are at the mercy of the attention-grabbing manipulative information industry that drives outrage, misinformation, and moral indignation to serve the needs of powerful, unscrupulous stakeholders.
The problem is fundamental - it is the underlying human drive at the core of the act of arguing - the need to be right - to shut down others - to get that kick of dopamine at someone else's expense.
There is an alternative - inquisitiveness, curiosity, courage, and, dare I say it, a sense of wonder when you find reconciliation and authentic communication when previously there was none.
Switching Argument to Inquiry and Nonviolent Communication
I spectacularly mishandled that entire interaction - arguing was entirely the wrong approach.
In an argument, when someone says something you disagree with, you would typically respond: "You're wrong, and here's why". At some level, the purpose of an argument is stop communication by winning. In an inquiry, you start from a different place by saying "Help me understand". You don't need to agree, but you engage, you dig, you ask for more detail. You don't abandon your own views, you create space for thinking and communication rather than defensive posturing. Most importantly, the purpose of the inquiry is to continue talking, opening up the discussion rather than trying to shut it down.
When I talked to a trusted friend about this whole interaction, they mentioned 'Non Violent Communication' where the central idea is to provide connection and a sense of belonging to the people you speak to. I mention this because it seems highly relevant, but I'm not an expert in this approach so I can't really comment further on it.
If I had the chance of a do-over with my colleague, I'd strive to engage from the perspective of an inquiry and to try to dig into the context of the discussion rather than responding combatively to his claims.
But even then, I doubt that the situation would have lead to any meaningful discussion, since the frame of reference for each of us was just so wildly different - navigating that space with authenticity is going to prove incredibly challenging, even with the best of intentions and a solid, inquiry-based communication style.
A Theory about MAGA Political Psychology
Our conflict arose because the moral, political, and societal spaces we each inhabit are wildly different. To me, he barely said anything before his discourse became problematic about race, gender, nationality, religion, and simple humanism. I would say that my highly critical reaction to his point of view, although devoid of direct personal attack, was enough to shut down the discussion. I became a tiresome liberal attacking him for his views, even though I only sought to engage him and actually flesh out the topics of discussion we were engaging in.
For my friend, and possibly for MAGA supporters more generally, I felt that he was not really interested in the details of the political discussion, he just wanted to be able to speak with, and be recognized for some sense of authority about societal matters. This is consistent with my past history with him, when we would chat about all sorts of things, including politics. The main thing that changed was me between then and now is me - the stakes for me became non-arbitrary and consequential. If he supported Trump, then, as a moral, intelligent person, he needed to justify the reasons for his choice, but to my mind, there is no authentic way any intelligent, moral, rational person could possibly reasonably support him, we were at an impasse.
In previous essays (American Evil, and American Evil Part 2), I attempted to explain why people voted for Trump by suggesting that either (A) people were deceived, or (B) people found some kind of advantage by supporting him, or that (C) they were just plain Evil, Bad, and Wrong.
This interaction has revealed another possible explanation why so many of my fellow Americans are somehow happy with the current state of the country's politics: At some level, they just get to feel good about themselves right now. Maybe its being able to enjoy a position of moral or societal authority; maybe its a relief from all the criticism they received based on privilege, race, gender, etc; maybe its some sense of grievance or fear leveled at Leftists, Immigrants, Elites or some other category of people; maybe its just being able to express yourself in a way that was previously socially unacceptable and now its somehow OK.
At the heart of this position is a profound lack of self awareness. They likely do not know why they like Trump and maybe, like some of the framing that my colleague saw fit to establish, they do not actually want to talk about policy, law, or society in any substantive way. That's not the point. The point is for them to get to feel good and Trump enables that.
Of course, the flip-side of that idea is that the people who are against Trump make them feel bad - and so they think even less of those of us trying to argue with them.
Didn't we get the memo?
To me, this is reminiscent of James Baldwin's writings about White Americans. He wrote: "They have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it". The bare-faced depravity of the current political moment and the level of misinformation surrounding it from right wing commentators and citizens is the most staggering expression of this willful, deliberate blindness that I have ever seen in my life. It is soul destroying. I find myself in despair.
And yet, Baldwin also wrote: "Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced."
This is why inquiry with someone like my former friend is so difficult. I'm not asking him to change an opinion about tax policy. I'm asking him to examine and confront aspects of his identity that he's willing to go to extreme lengths to preserve. I'm asking him to see what he's invested in not seeing. I'm asking him to reconstruct his entire sense of self and place in the world.
What This Means for Dialogue
To me, this reinforces the need for inquiry and nonviolent communication in political discourse - and to maybe recognize that discussions with MAGA supporters have little to next to nothing about policy, law, justice, or anything that can be solved by argumentation. They are principally about identity.
In my attempts to have these conversations, I will strive to engage with people at that level and dig into what is it that Trump and MAGA provides for them.
I hope that somehow understanding the nature of that particular sacrifice and payoff could be something that could lead to authentic discussion and possible healing for us all.
Epilogue + References
This essay was written with support from the Claude AI from Anthropic. I also draw on several key works that have shaped my understanding about totalitarianism and the disastrous potential consequences of the current moment.
Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (1996) - A controversial but illuminating analysis of how pre-existing cultural frameworks enabled ordinary people to participate willingly in atrocity.
James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (1963) and numerous essays and interviews - Baldwin's unflinching examination of white American identity and the refusal to face racial reality remains essential reading.
Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (2020) - A profound reframing of American racism as a caste system with deep structural parallels to other caste societies.
Raoul Peck, I Am Not Your Negro (2016) - A documentary about Baldwin that shows how white America's reaction to Black humanity reveals the fragility of white identity.
Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (2012) - Useful for understanding conservative moral frameworks, though I use his work critically rather than accepting all his conclusions.
For those interested in understanding authoritarianism, Christian nationalism, and the MAGA movement, I also recommend recent work by scholars like Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Anne Nelson, Katherine Stewart, and Sarah Posner.
The conversation continues. The work continues. May we have the wisdom to know what's needed and the courage to do it.
